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EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

bbc.com

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Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#361

Post by morelisp »

dkirill wrote: post #217
morelisp wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then go after their offshores. What, specifically, does this mean? The EU sanctions, idk, the Bahamas? Who? And how?

I mean seize illegally earned money and/or forbid them and their families spending those money in the EU and other friendly jurisdictions. EU as a whole should have enough weight to make it happen if enough political will is present.

They are already forbidden to conduct any business, i.e. spend any money, in the EU.

To literally "seize" the money stored in an offshore bank account is difficult unless the EU is also willing to march an army into those countries.

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#362

Post by gpvos »

briandear wrote: post #357
londons_explore wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few countries who will pretty much let anybody in. Migrants often bring with them skills that the locals don't have, and in any mass migration, those who migrate (vs stay where they are) tend to be the fitter, smarter, richer people. The main reason not to take migrants is you might see substantial economic losses as migrants send income back home to support family. You might alienate your existing popula…

> in any mass migration, those who migrate (vs stay where they are) tend to be the fitter, smarter, richer people. Completely not true. Look at the migrations to the EU, as well as to the US. The “smarter, fitter, richer” people aren’t mass migrating from Latin America. Not at any significant percentage at least.

Partially true, maybe. At least towards the EU, they are not the poorest people either.

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#363

Post by paganel »

andrepd wrote: post #151
ceilingcorner wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagreeing with the EU != equivalent to an authoritarian regime. Politics is more complicated than Good Guys vs. Bad Guys.

Hungary is objectively an authoritarian regime because it removed separation of powers, stacked court with political appointees, closed down virtually all independent press, made state TV into a propaganda piece for Fidesz, etc. Not because it "disagrees with the EU".

> removed separation of powers,

This has become de facto meaningless in most of the EU countries as European law is over-writing local laws, in effect making the local (i.e. national) separation of powers meaningless. The German Constitutional Court is trying to fight this [1] but I think it's a losing battle, it's either accept the inevitable (meaning European law supersedes local law) or go the Brexit way.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-policy-germany-eu-ana...

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#364

Post by monksy »

Ichthypresbyter wrote: post #218
londons_explore wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see a worldwide agreement that no country will ever stop a citizen from leaving, as long as they have permission to enter another country. Even if the person is in prison or debt, they can always leave with just themselves to another country willing to take them. If all nations agreed to that, we could stop worrying about most other human rights abuses, and country governance becomes more of a free market…

>I'd like to see a worldwide agreement that no country will ever stop a citizen from leaving, as long as they have permission to enter another country. It's in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 13 Section 2: >Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Of course, it's not clear how much legal force the UDHR has.

> much legal force the UDHR has.

They won't enforce it, they won't even say anything. Upon request they'll even hand over the names of people of interest to regimes that wish to execute or torture innocent people. See the UNHRs response to handing over names of Uighurs.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/human-rights-whistleblower...

"it's not a problem"

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/22/china-rejects-uighu...

When you're talking about exit bans, that's something China is known for, and it's gotten bad enough that the US State Department mentions it. (That was a long time coming)

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#365

Post by pavel_lishin »

briandear wrote: post #355
ridethebike wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a war act? What does it mean in terms of practical steps?

Bomb one of their airbases. Russia can annex Crimea with no real response, so why should the EU show restraint? (I am not suggesting a bombing campaign, just a targeted strike on the airbase from which the intercepting fighter jet departed.) What’s Russia going to do? They want that Nord Stream pipeline. They aren’t going to militarily respond over some two bit dictator, even one friendly to Russia. The Nord Stream e…

> why should the EU show restraint?

... to avoid escalating a single incident into a war, which is one of the reasons it exists?

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#366

Post by gpvos »

tremon wrote: post #192
gpvos wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see something like this as well, but it's not going to happen as long as so many people and/or their governments don't like large influxes of people.

as long as they have permission to enter another country The GP's statement wasn't about influx, but egress.

Hmm, okay, I didn't consider the permission issue enough maybe. In that case, the effect will, sadly, be negligible.

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#367

Post by drexlspivey »

Aeolun wrote: post #235

I don’t understand how any of this stuff is even ok. If any random person had done this, the police would be after them to arrest them for kidnapping, but because it’s a nation state doing this the only thing that happens is closed airspace? I feel like there should be something we can do that wouldn’t be a slap on the wrist.

> I feel like there should be something we can do that wouldn’t be a slap on the wrist.

Like what? Belarus is a sovereign state, they can do whatever they want in their soil and no one has any authority to enforce anything on them.

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#368

Post by simonh »

rklaehn wrote: post #288
simonh wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I fail to see how this is different than other EU countries. That's a pretty colossal scale of failure, IMHO. Inability to conform to platonic ideals of democracy and transparency != blatant autocracy.

So you think the head of the constitutional court being an active politician with 12 years in parliament is a minor deviation from a platonic ideal? That is exactly the same as what the OP mentioned. The German constitutional court is stacked with political appointees. Sure, the situation in Hungary might be even worse. But western countries in the last decade have completely lost the moral high ground. You can not i…

That's one guy in a constitutional court of 16 members, and he wasn't a political appointment but was elected by the German parliament (something like a parliament, I'm no expert on the german system).

Assange was put in prison for being a bail jumper wanted on rape allegations. He's now in a perfectly ordinary British prison, going through the usual extradition process under politically independent judicial authority. There's no guarantee he will even be extradited.

Viktor Orban is now functionally a dictator ruling by emergency decree, and has effectively neutralised the constitutional court. They even retroactively invalidated all decisions made by the court before 2012 for goodness sake! There is no way shape or form in which this can be meaningfully equated to anything else in the history of the EU.

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#369

Post by londons_explore »

briandear wrote: post #357
londons_explore wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few countries who will pretty much let anybody in. Migrants often bring with them skills that the locals don't have, and in any mass migration, those who migrate (vs stay where they are) tend to be the fitter, smarter, richer people. The main reason not to take migrants is you might see substantial economic losses as migrants send income back home to support family. You might alienate your existing popula…

> in any mass migration, those who migrate (vs stay where they are) tend to be the fitter, smarter, richer people. Completely not true. Look at the migrations to the EU, as well as to the US. The “smarter, fitter, richer” people aren’t mass migrating from Latin America. Not at any significant percentage at least.

> smarter, fitter, richer

Compared to those left behind.

Obviously they might not be smarter, fitter and richer than people at the place they're arriving at, and that is one of the major reasons immigration is often restricted.

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#370

Post by rklaehn »

simonh wrote: post #368
rklaehn wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think the head of the constitutional court being an active politician with 12 years in parliament is a minor deviation from a platonic ideal? That is exactly the same as what the OP mentioned. The German constitutional court is stacked with political appointees. Sure, the situation in Hungary might be even worse. But western countries in the last decade have completely lost the moral high ground. You can not i…

That's one guy in a constitutional court of 16 members, and he wasn't a political appointment but was elected by the German parliament (something like a parliament, I'm no expert on the german system). Assange was put in prison for being a bail jumper wanted on rape allegations. He's now in a perfectly ordinary British prison, going through the usual extradition process under politically independent judicial authorit…

In Germany we have the biggest restrictions of fundamental rights since the existence of the federal republic of Germany.

We are all on indefinite house arrest. Millions of people are not allowed to work.

And the constitutional court does not even want to hear cases objecting to this. They will make a decision in 1 or 2 years when it has become irrelevant.

So it seems we don't have any fundamental rights at all. So spare me the outrage about Hungary.

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